Needing something lightly comic, Veber was my man.
His "The Closet" was trivial, but few trivial things are amusing and fondly recalled. Here, with a different actor, is the same character with much the same quality.
I won't bother you with the story. It doesn't matter. What matters is the way the humor is designed. Essentially all the humor is in the lines. There is no physical comedy here and almost no visual comedy. It is mostly in the dialog. Here is the trick: where other comedy is episodic and/or depends on a zany pace, this has pretty much a normal world, and normal pace. You cannot read the warning signs that a joke is coming. It could appear at any moment, and does from the very beginning.
So very early in the game we are trained to engage ourself very closely and pay attention. This is painless because the world we invest in is so light. We need erect no barriers. Because we open ourselves so, we anticipate what might be funny, investing in the possibility. The form of the thing enlists us in making funny.
This is easy to test. I believe it to be true, and honorably delicate in the way it helps us live.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
